Sharon Osbourne leaving America's Got Talent?

Clarifying vague statements she made recently about leaving America's Got Talent, Sharon Osbourne insisted in an interview with the New York Post that "it's time to move on" from her role as a judge on the NBC reality talent contest. Following an ambiguous tweet suggesting that she wouldn't be back for the eighth season, Osbourne dropped hints that she wasn't asked to return to the program during a press panel for her CBS daytime talk show, The Talk, commenting that "six years is a long time to be on any show." Although the peacock network's entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt had dismissed the rumors as "much ado about nothing," her remarks to the Post make it clear that she will not be returning to America's Got Talent after a heated disagreement with NBC over the network's decision to axe her son, Jack Osbourne, from a new reality show.

Entitled Stars Earn Stripes, the show will pit celebrities against each other in a series of military training exercises and had been courting the only son of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne as a participant until Jack went public with his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Two days before the show went into production, Jack received an email that his services were no longer required because of his condition, even though the junior Osbourne had offered to purchase his own insurance policy to protect the network and had completed a rigorous endurance race in January. For their part, NBC proposed to pay Jack his full appearance fee, but he wasn't doing it for the money; he wanted to compete and provide an inspirational example for others suffering from MS. Despite being locked into a contract with America's Got Talent, Sharon isn't worried because all NBC can do is prevent her from being a judge on another network—something the 59-year-old music industry maven obviously isn't interested in at this stage of her life.